These are your rights to a refund or compensation after the Virgin Media outage

Conor Matchett

Published:3:05 pmMay 15, 2019

Thousands of Virgin Media customers were left without an internet connection or unable to make calls or send texts following a major connection outage yesterday (14 May).

The UK-wide issues lasted for around half the day with the outages affecting mobile data, calls and text messages, with the issue solved at around 10pm. Virgin Media apologised for the disruption and said it is looking at compensation for customers affected by the outage.

It comes less than six months after another mobile giant, O2, had a major network meltdown which left millions without network coverage in December.

What are you rights?

Telecoms regulator Ofcom states that customers may be able to claim money back from companies who do not provide a service you have paid for.

In cases where your service is down for a long period of time, you may be entitled to a refund or credit. If you paid for public wifi during the outage, for example, you may also be able to make a complaint and ask for compensation to cover the expense.

O2 customers were given a universal discount or free airtime, offering people two days of
complimentary airtime, 10 per cent free credit or a 10 per cent discount.

What do Virgin Media say?

According to its website, Virgin Media offers customers an automatic compensation scheme which automatically credits your bill or phone line if you experience a qualifying service issue.

It says the company will compensate customers £8 per day for a total loss of service after two full days from registering the loss of service.

The best way to ensure you get any compensation that may be due is by raising the issue with Virgin. You can do this over the phone, online or on social media, but lines will be busy until the post-outage chaos dies down.